The aesthetics of Chaosmos : the Middle Ages of James Joyce

106 Pages·1989·4.93 MB·English

by  Joyce

ICS
he Middle Ages
of James Joyce
By Umberto Eco
Translated frorn the ltal ian by El len Esrock
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Copyright © 1982 by the University of Tulsa; lntroductory Note © 1989 by the
President ancl Fellows of Harvard College
Al I rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Originally publishecl as
"Le poetiche di Joyce," by Umberto Eco,
© Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri,
Bornpiani, Sonzogno, Etas S.p.A,
Milan, 1962.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eco, Umberto.
[Poetiche di Joyce. English]
The aesthetics of Chaosrnos : the Micldle Ages of James Joyce/ by
Umberto Eco , translatecl from the ltalian by Ellen Esrock.
p. crn.
Translation of: Le poetiche cli Joyce.
Reprint. Originally publishecl: Tulsa, Okla. · University of Tulsa,
cl 982.
Bibliography: p.
ISBN 0-674-00635-6
1. Joyce, James, 1882-1941-Criticisrn and interpretation.
2. Joyce, James, 1882-1941-Aesthetics. 3. Medievalisrn in
literature. I. Title.
[PR6019.09Z532713 1989]
823'.912-dcl 9 88-28315
CIP
Note to the 1989 Edition by David Robey vii
Translator's Foreword ix
Author's Note xi
I. The Early Joyce
Il. Ulysses 33
lii. Finnegans Wake 61
References to Joycean Literature
in this Work 91

Eco's essay on Joyce originally appeared as the final chapter of the
first edition (1962) of Opera Aperta, rnost of which is now translated
into English as The Open Work (Harvard University Press, 1989); it
was then rernoved from subsequent editions and pubi ished separately.
This separation must have been dictated purely by considerations of
size, since the argurnent of this essay is integrally connected to the
themes of Qpera Aperta, for which Joyce's work is a constant point of
reference.(For Eco, Joyce is the exemplary rnodern, or rnodernist,
writer. His' work is the most powerful, radical, and influential ern
bodirnent of tendencies that dominate the literature and art of our
time-tendencies formulated by Eco in the concept of the "open"
work. Finnegans Wake in particular is for Eco the "open" work par
excel lence1
)
The Aesthetics of Chaosmos is thus a contribution to a discussion
which has remained topica! in a great deal of modem literary theory
a relatively early contributi on that predates the explosion of I iterary
theory in the rnid-sixties, and anticipates much subsequent work. lt is
distinguished by a nurnber of features that reflect Eco's particular con
cerns at the time he wrote it, though these concerns have al so in various
ways remained part of his thinking(Jhe conception of works of art as
neµisJemoJogicaLrnetaphors," which plays a rnajor role in Opera
Aperta, is applied with special force to Joyce, in whose evolution as
a writer Eco finds an ernbodirnent of what he considers the rnajor
development in the history of Western thought: the transition frorn
models of rational order, expressed most fully in the summae of rne
dieval Scholasticism, to the sense of chaos and crisis that dominates
the modem experience of the world. Along with, and even more than,
other modem "open" works, U/ysses and Finnegans Wake give form
to this experience of the world, and thereby constitute in their own
way a kind of knowledge, a bringing to consciousness of the nature
of the modem condition. Such knowledge, Eco argues in Opera Aperta,
is al so a basis for poi itical action; consciousness of the modem con
ditjon enables one to act upon the world to change it for the better)
\There is, too, an engagingly persona! aspect to Eco's discussion of
VIII i\!ote to the 1989 Edition
Joyce. Not only does Joyce's evolution, from Catholic, Thornist inter
ests to a disordered vision of life, rnirror Eco's; the coexistence of
rnodels of order and disorder that Eco finds in Ulysses has also char
acterized rnost of his own work, including The Name of the Rose,
which so strikinglyjuxtaposes the harmonious, rational rnedieval in
tellectual systern with the worldview expressed by Williarn of Bas
kerville: a distinctively modem sense of chaos and crisis .. ,
David Robey
rans s
The Aesthetics of Chaosmos is a translation of Umberto Eco's ltalian
text Le Poetiche di Joyce (Milano: Bompiani, 1966), first published as
a part of Opera Aperta (Milano: Bompiani, 1962). For the present
edition, Eco has introduced one new section, "The Medieval Model,"
which incorporates parts of a lecture given in 1969 at Tu Isa University,
and he has substantially expanded one existing section, "The Poetics
of the Pun." Also, as explained in the author's note, certain scholarly
references have been eliminated.
The translation of Eco's work proved challenging. In addition to the
expected task of recasting stylistic forms, the project required careful
balancing. On the one hand, we wished to maintain the originai 1960's
perspective of the text. We sought, therefore, to avoid terminology
that was jndigenous to more contemporary models of I inguistic analysis
(as developed, for example, by Eco in A Theory of Semantics [Bloorn
ington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1976]). On the other hand, the ltalian
text was written with an irnpulse towards the future. Eco's analyses
foreshadowed issues that would be more fully developed within the
frarnework of conternporary semiotics. We attempted, then, to recap
ture its trajectory~ as well as its point of origin.
I am greatly indebted to Alice Oxman for a preliminary, partial
translation of Le Poetiche di Joyce, portions of which have been in
corporated into the present text. And I am grateful, of course, to Um
berto Eco, for his patience in undertaking this excursion into his
Joycean past. In the spirit of translator-editors, I accept responsibility
for al I errors.
Ellen J. Es rock
d
~--Jew York University, 1979

s
In publishing my Joycean adventure after twenty years I have not
succumbed to the temptation to make substantial changes, even though
the long work with Ellen Esrock in making the text more comprehen
sible has led to many cuts, especially in those parts which functioned
at the time to give various items of scholarly information to ltalian
readers. Joyce was a/so an ltalian author, and some of his highest
praise carne in the very beginning from the ltalian literary !JJilitJr
(Svevo, Benco, Montale ... ). But in 1962 Ulysses had been fully trans
lated into ltalian for only two years, not to mention the incomplete
and tentative translations of Finnegans Wake. Thus my text was over
loaded with explanations and bibliographical references unnecessary
for the current American reader.
I have therefore retained only the parts focusing on the centrai theme
of my research: the permanence of a medieval model, not only in the
e~y writings but also in the later work of James Joyce.
J In order to understand my curiosity, some biographical information
may be helpful: I began my scholarly career studying medieval aes:
!~~J(c:_s(// Problema Estetico in San Tommaso [Torino: Edizioni di "Fi
losofia," 1956]; "Sviluppo dell'estetica Medievale," in Momenti e
Problemi di Storia de/l'estetica [Milano: Marzorati, 1959], both works
··amalgamated in // Problema Estetico in Tommaso d'Aquino [Milano:
Bompiani, 1970]),1"irr1mediately after (but following the same interests
and curiosity about the problem of structuring vs. destructuring in
communication), I studied the language of contemporary avant-gardes.
The study of Joyce was first published as part of my bookDpeJéL!:\perta
(Milano: Bompiani, 1962) the first chapter of which the reader can
find as the first essay of my recent The Rote of the Reader (Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press, 1979):';,
T o me Joyce was the node where the Middle Ages and the avant
garde meet, and the present book is the story and the historical
theoretical foundation of such a paradoxical meeting:·
I have therefore chosen to keep the originai perspective of my text,
even though much important Joycean research has appeared since
1962. Thus I have not taken into account the challenging contributions
Xli Author'~ Note
ofThornas Staley, Bernard Benstock, Fritz Senn, Robert Scholes, David
Hayrnann, Lulli Paci, Anthony Burgess and others, or, to speak of
research more directly connected with rny topic, Jacques Aubert and
Jan Schoonbroodt. References to the scholarship that inspired rny re
search prior to 1962 are listed at the end of the book, while other
works, prirnarily concerning the Middle Ages, Renaissance philoso
phy, and rnodern science are found in the footnotes. I have expanded
a paragraph on the rnedieval model and an analysis of puns in Fin
negans Wake (the subject of a 1971 essay "Sernantics of Metaphor,"
now published in The Rote of the r~eader).
I have agreed to awaken-again and rnake rny book riverrunning in
a vicus of recirculation only because of the rnissionary fervor of rny
friends at the Jarnes Joyce Foundation and James Joyce Quarterly, to
whorn we owe the fact that Martello Tower is stili and again living.
My debt to thern should be recorded in Finneganian. That, in fact, has
been done, but only in secret files lost or hidden in the rneandertale
connecting the "hauts lieux" of Trieste, Oublin, Paris, Zurich and
Tulsa.
U rnberto Eco
Milano, 1981